OpenSSL install on your AWS server

March 2, 2021 / Nirav Shah

OpenSSL is a robust, commercial-grade, and full-featured toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. It is also a general-purpose cryptography library AnD providing support for various cryptographic algorithms such as cyphers (AES, Blowfish, DES, IDEA etc.), and cryptographic hash functions (MD5, MD4, SHA-1, SHA-2 etc.)

Step 1: Install the necessary packages for compiling

Issue the command below to install the necessary packages for compilation:

sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall zlib1g-dev -y

Step 2: Download OpenSSL

cd /usr/local/src/
sudo wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1c.tar.gz

Next, extract the downloaded file using the command below:

sudo tar -xf openssl-1.1.1c.tar.gz 
cd openssl-1.1.1c

Step 3: Install OpenSSL

sudo ./config --prefix=/usr/local/ssl --openssldir=/usr/local/ssl shared zlib

sudo make
sudo make test
sudo make install

Step 4: Configure OpenSSL Shared Libraries

cd /etc/ld.so.conf.d/
sudo nano openssl-1.1.1c.conf

Enter the following:

/usr/local/ssl/lib

Ensure to save before you exit.

Next, reload the dynamic link by issuing the command below:

sudo ldconfig -v

Step 5: Configure OpenSSL Binary

sudo mv /usr/bin/c_rehash /usr/bin/c_rehash.backup
sudo mv /usr/bin/openssl /usr/bin/openssl.backup

Next, edit the /etc/environment file using vim.

sudo nano /etc/environment

Insert the following:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/local/ssl/bin"

Ensure to save before you exit.

source /etc/environment
echo $PATH

We can now check and verify our installation of the latest stable version of OpenSSL using the command below:

which openssl
openssl version -a

So that’s it, OpenSSL is installed on your server.